Revelations: Mirror Mask
by The Lady Frost
Summary: Out of time, out of luck - the world falls to darkness. Without hope, without help - all they can do now...is turn on each other. A virus unleashed, a world in chaos in need of a hero. But there's nothing...but silence. Until the only sound they can hear, is the echo of their own screams. Character death and destruction. Intense violence and gore.
1. Prologue

**Revelations:**

 **Mirror Mask**

* * *

 **December 25th -** ** _Ragnarök_**

* * *

The thunder echoed - a great gong against the bowl of black that was sky above them. It was the end of times. It was awash in the crashing sea, the swirling sky, the driving darkness. It was cold, forsaken, forgotten.

This is how the world ended: not in fire and blood, no. In thunder and death. Would they both wash away into nothing?

She stood in the rain with her hands out to the sides.

"I'm unarmed. Look at me. I'm unarmed. I'm not a threat."

She was shaking. Her breath eased in and out of her lungs in a puff and burst of white. Her voice carried, filling the air with the desperation that lay between them now like blood from an open wound.

"….please. Please. Put it down. You can still put it down. I know you can. I know it. You're still you. I'm still me. I'm me. It's me…look at me. See me. I'm still me."

She was soaked in blood, listing badly to one side. She was bruised and broken and dying. She'd crawled away – from the only man she'd ever really let close enough to hurt her.

They'd battled. They'd bled. They'd broken and burst like werewolves from the flesh of their own determination. They'd nearly died.

They were the only two left standing.

They stood now facing each other in the pouring rain. The rain slid down the prominent blade of his nose and dripped free. The hair in his eyes hid the color but it couldn't hide the emptiness.

Hollow. He was hollow.

She didn't know how they'd gotten here. She could see, if she closed her eyes, the struggle of it, the loss, the pain…that had taken a hero and left him ruined.

But she didn't know how they'd gotten to this moment – where there was nothing left of him at all.

She tried again, voice breaking on it, "I love you. You know that? I love you. Don't let him win…he can't…if you're still you. Are you? Are you still…you?"

He wasn't.

He was hollow.

"Are you even _**you** _anymore?"

The echo of the gun was her only answer.

* * *

 **Post Note:**

 _I started this story on the premise of something else. But it got lost there under what I really wanted to write. This is it. I don't know where it ends. But I know it's what my brain wants. The Mistress Muse is heavily credited here. She has these deep ideas of what lurks beneath us all. She also leans heavily into the darker side of things to draw her inspiration. So, although the writing is mine, the story is ours._

 _*1 -In Norse mythology, **Ragnarök** is a series of future events, including a great battle, foretold to ultimately result in the death of a number of major figures (including the Gods Odin, Thor, Týr, Freyr, Heimdallr, and Loki), the occurrence of various natural disasters, and the subsequent submersion of the world in water. Afterward, the world will resurface anew and fertile, the surviving and returning gods will meet, and the world will be repopulated by ** two human survivors**. Ragnarök is an important event in Norse mythology and has been the subject of scholarly discourse and theory throughout the history of Germanic studies. _

_In a way, what Wesker attempts in Resident Evil 5 is a cleansing, using Uroboros (which also has ties to Norse Mythology and likely respresents The Midgard Serpent - or the serpent who encircles the world). To be reborn, the world must die first. Capcom draws a lot of their monsters and their ideas from mythology. Uroborus (or Ouroboros) is itself, in ancient Egyptian iconography, the image of a snake eating its own tail - which is also the image of the Midgard Serpent. In Gnosticism, a serpent biting its tail symbolized eternity and the soul of the world. So it makes sense that such a thing would herald the end of times and the birth of a "new world". But we won't find Wesker here. This isn't his world. Not yet._

 _I want to see what happens when the world dies. So I'm going to do what I do here, and make my own path through Revelations toward the end of the world. Obviously this falls under AU since it parts from the path of the game after the ship, but let's see what happens when the world falls apart. What happens, essentially, if the heroes fail and the virus gets loose?_

 _What's the world look like lost in the Abyss? (T-Abyss clearly. XD)_


	2. Episode 1: A Ship at Sea

**A/N:** _Reworking this guy a little bit to steer it back to where I want. If you don't read my stuff often, you don't know that I weave worlds together sometimes. In this case, we're taking an ancient horror and merging it with a parasite, tying it up in a bow of a virus and setting it loose in the great white north. A terrifying concept. A terribly fun premise. I'm gathering inspiration from The Thing for the setup. If you don't know it, it's a really great movie, and a pretty underrated game._

* * *

 **Revelations:**

 **Mirror Mask**

* * *

 **Episode 1:**

 **A Ship at Sea**

* * *

 **3 months prior**

 **The Queen Zenobia**

* * *

The **Queen Zenobia** was loose in the middle of the ocean. It was a vessel built and bred for comfort and wealth. A beautiful ship, she was reduced now to the hollowed-out shell of her former self. She was a shadow of what she'd been bred and built to be. She was a ghost in the ocean, haunting even as she floated among the foggy sky in relative obscurity.

The smell of salt and sea airlifted and filled the nose with the knowledge that the storm that played out over the burgeoning black horizon was coming. It tossed the waves like playful fingers, flicking and careless, lapping against the sides of the aging vessel with a wet abandon. Were the answers aboard this once successful ship?

Was he?

Was he here?

She waited, watching the twist of clouds in the distance. The storm would be brutal when it broke, creating interference between HQ and them. It would leave them stranded. Would it leave them stranded alone?

 _Chris…are you here?_

A rumble of thunder was the only answer.

He was her partner, her best friend, her mirror. It wasn't romantic. It had never been romantic. But it was love.

He was possibly the only person in the world she loved more than herself.

He was possibly the only person in the world she allowed to know her.

Among the Bio-Terror world, she was known to be as cold as the rain that trickled down her face as she leaped free of the chopper to land on the rolling deck of the darkened ship. She didn't make friends. She didn't make enemies. She didn't make a noise. She was quiet and deadly. She was cool and collected. She was professional and strong.

Chris Redfield was the gun, Jill Valentine was the bullet. They struck a blow together and ended dynasties made of evil. They were the most feared pair since Batman and Robin to those on the wrong side of the law.

He'd gone missing. The call came and woke her in the middle of the night. Missing. How? His signal had gone down over the ocean. Here. Right here. Aboard a ship without a Captain. Aboard a ship without a crew.

O'Brian had been adamant about not sending her in alone. So she was here to rendezvous with her partner. Parker would work in tandem with her and their liaison to locate Chris and then secure their departure.

But the BSAA wasn't working alone. The threat posed by _Il-Veltro_ was too great. The risk of exposure here too wide. It was a joint effort with USSTRATCOM to bring in Chris, and find out who was behind his abduction.

The location of the vessel in the ocean was too close to Terragrigia's remains. It was too suspect. It was too close to the anniversary of the cities demise.

Something stank in Denmark.

Jill mused, "Why would he be out here?"

Parker came back, genuinely curious, "Hard to say. Jessica as well. This isn't anywhere close to where they should have been headed."

Quietly, Jill agreed, "I know."

The ship tossed her gently in the churning waves. It was dark and rainy, windy and rough. The sea didn't like the invasion of the girl on her swirling deck. The vessel itself rejected her presence, attempting to toss her off the sides into the abyss.

But she wasn't the type to go quietly into the good night. She was here to find her partner...hell or high water.

Jill turned and opened the door that would take her into the inner sanctum of the rotting ship. The thick and putrid stench was the first sign something was about to go very wrong within the moldy confines of the metal coffin she was set to explore. She touched her communicator in her ear, "Parker…are you close?"

"I'll be there in a moment, Jill," The Italian accent was thick and attractive. The man in question had been a helluva partner. He wasn't Chris, but he was close. He was polite, funny, and energetic. He didn't shy away from danger and he didn't care about the risk of personal loss. Parker Luciani had been the best back up partner a girl could ask for. "What is your Genesis telling you?"

The Genesis was the neatest thing to come out of fields operations in a long time. It was able to tell you the who, the when, the where, and the what. If it breathed, beat, moved, or functioned - the Genesis could tell you all about it. It looked like a big flashlight mixed with a handgun and coupled with a power drill.

She lifted it, scanning the narrow walls that ran with mold and bloated, rotting wood and steel. It analyzed, offering little in the way of help for them. "The mod ratio is pretty high. The area reads negative for vital signs…at least at the moment." She turned a little and something registered, squeaking on the machine.

Jill glanced at the screen. And it told her that the thing she was scanning wasn't human. It had been…once….but it was long done trying to pretend it was now. She lowered the Genesis and found herself face to face with the ugliest, smelliest, stupidest looking thing she'd come up against in a long time. It was slime and rot and infection with blackened, eel-like arms and tentacles and a sphincter for a face filled with teeth. It literally looked like a butthole with teeth.

The joke that wanted to spill out of her mouth fell short. There was no Chris there to laugh with her about it. Parker was great, he was…but he wasn't right. And she felt, again, the rolling, skin prickling push of pain.

She raised her weapon, "Parker? There are hostiles. I'm going to neutralize this one."

"Roger. Hold on. I'm almost there."

She blasted it, felt the air shift as it slapped the ground where she'd been a moment before, and rolled to her feet to shoot its warbling face right in the gaping maw of its thousand teeth filled mouth. She'd read something about a similar disgusting mess. She couldn't remember where.

She blasted it in the face and it didn't stop. It just kept on coming. She holstered the pistol and pulled her M9 from the sheath on her thigh. Her body settled, waited, and when it was close enough she flurried it. She came in low, spun out, and brought the little blade up to butcher it. She jabbed and dipped even as it tried to swing at her. Jill rolled across it, smoothly missing tentacles and teeth, and severed pieces as she went.

She watched them plop and drop and shiver on the ground. It was a dance. She was a ballerina. She pirouetted and plied and spun seamlessly. She shed the skin of the warrior and was nothing more than speed and skill.

She heard Parker open the door as she moved. He watched her, curious. She kicked and flipped and dropped. She poured it on, spilled it back, and destroyed. A beautiful thing, he mused, to see a woman move like music with a knife.

Objectively, she had the face of an angel. He wanted to stare at it until it vested itself in the interior chambers of his brain and made a home. She was, without a doubt, the most beautiful woman he'd ever met. Her smooth dark hair, the swirling gray of her eyes, the centerfold body in that wet suit. He'd laughed a little meeting her.

She'd lifted those perfect brows at him.

And Parker had said, "You realize you are at a distinct advantage in this business, right?"

"How so?"

"A lot of men will see the face first and forget about the blade behind it."

"Everything is a weapon, Parker. Everything. From beauty to brains to braun. It's all there to help you do your job. How you use it? That's what defines you from the idiots that see my face and forget I'm a threat."

She was beautiful. And she was brilliant. He enjoyed partnering with her for both reasons.

They moved to the grate in the center of the filthy floor. The Genesis was telling them that it was positive for gun powder and traces of DNA. They stared into the gelatinous pile of crap within the rusty grate there and met each other's eyes.

"You want to…or…." Parker shifted his mouth, searching for the right words.

Jill studied him. He had a good face. He had little round cheeks and a perpetual five o'clock shadow. The shaggy hair around his smiling face was rich and dark like good oak. He was a big guy, stocky and thick, and made her miss Chris more than she should while looking at him. She kept waiting for the jokes to turn quasisexual. But Parker was a gentleman. He joked, plenty, but it was never untoward.

Jill shrugged and glanced around. The kitchen area granted her the use of an ugly, rusty pair of tongs. She picked them up, clicked them together, and dug into the ooze. They both made faces of disgust as she reached those tongs into the mess of it. Parker covered her, shuddering. Her fingers closed the tongs around the hilt of the pistol and pulled it free.

It was…not Bettina. It was not Bettina. Bettina was Chris' Sig Sauer P226. She was his favorite 9mm and had been in his holster any time he'd gone out to face the demons. She operated by a short-recoil locked breech method and had a decocking lever incorporated on the side. This pistol…was not Bettina.

Relieved, Jill held the pistol while Parker scanned it with his Genesis. They waited, relaying data and looking at the readout. The pistol was registered to a Marvin Starkwater. He was from New Jersey and worked for the FBI.

Jill lifted a brow. Parker shrugged.

"See what you can find out about this shit," Jill said conversationally, "I'm gonna check out the rest of the top floor here and see what I can dig up."

"Let me just get some samples for HQ and I'll be right behind you."

"Cool." Jill stepped out into the hallway and took notice of several things. The first was that the ship was a disaster. Things didn't just die here. They'd died fighting and blasted apart by the people trying to survive. They'd also turned. The lack of bodies, the mass amount of dripping ooze and stench, told the story of their demise. A helluva way to die.

The way forward was a mess of broken debris and collapse. The elevator to her right was wide open, dismantled, and empty. It was either lodged on another floor or it was done for. Either way? She wasn't going that way.

Jill studied the short curve of stairs to the left. They led down a level. She should really wait for Parker but she wasn't in the mood to do that either. She moved down the short flight of stairs and felt the temperature plummet as she went. The heat was clearly not on here.

She thought of the thing that had attacked her up there. It had moved in a staggering, robotic, almost jerky pattern. What was the infection here? And how was it spread? Her eyes slid up the wall in front of her and found the ducts broken, dripping, and offering the answer.

She knew, now, how they were getting around the ship. Jill studied the mess of it, considering how this would play out for them. They were susceptible, sort of, to bullets and clearly capable of being killed with melee and hand to hand. But the risk there was surpreme. Killing them could get tricky in close, narrow, and restrictive confines.

Jill moved to the second level of the stair case. She tried the first door she came to and it was locked. She wiggled the knob, considered it, and hit the button on her communicator. "Parker?"

"Yes, Jill." It sounded like Zhill. It was adorably Italian.

"My Genesis isn't giving me anything in terms of life down here. You?"

"Negative. There is nothing here."

"Yeah…Chris isn't here." The minute she said it, she felt it. She felt it like a proverbial punch in the gut. She closed her eyes and pictured his face. Not here, she thought, but something was here. And it needed finding.

She lifted her hand and touched the visualization flap on the door. She pushed it up and it creaked, whiny with rusty metal. She put her face to the narrow opening…and she died. She died where she stood. She felt everything swirl and shift back into place around her.

"Parker! Parker! I'm on the second floor. The first door! I've found Chris. Hurry!"

"I am on my way, Jill! Hold position."

There he was, waiting for her to save him. He was strapped to a chair, bound there with his head down. She could see the broad swell and shift of his back, each line of muscle, each curve of it in his arms and hands. He was unconscious, clearly, and so close. Why? Why was he bound in there?

Who was keeping him there?

"CHRIS!" She rattled the door. She kicked it. It rang with metal in the narrow hallway. "Chris! Can you hear me? Wake up!"

There is a moment when hope springs eternal. It coats the soul, lifts the spirit, and spills wet and wonderful into the heart. It was there now, in her chest, in her blood. She shook the door, kicked it. She felt like she couldn't breathe and could fly simultaneously. She wanted to rip the metal down with bare skin and excitement.

The sight of him so close, so infinitely far, rolled with a red and washing want across her body and stole her reason. She kicked the door again and called his name. She felt the blaze and burst of sheer soulful want of him inside of her belly with a pulsing combination of fear and happiness. He was RIGHT THERE.

He was her best friend. She was going to save him. She could feel it in her bones.

Parker was on the stairs now, moving closer. "Look! He's RIGHT THERE! Can we just get this door down somehow?"

"Is he alright in there?" Parker was peering through the opening. "Chris! Can you hear us?"

"He looks unconscious. Wait here ok? I'm gonna look around and see if I can find the key or something."

Parker nodded, "Try down toward the bilge. Most of the scientist probably gathered down that way to work. The truth is somewhere on this ship, Jill. Can't you feel it?"

Didn't he understand? The only truth that needed answering was on the other side of this door. Chris was here. He was alive. He was there waiting.

She cut down a flight of stairs and rounded the corner. She was two steps down when she heard the fighting. Something was making a burbling sound. It sounded like a slurp mixed with a rattle. She paused, staring at the glass in front of her.

The blood splashed wet and red like someone had spit. It stole her breath as she gasped. The body of a woman in a wet suit hit next, the glass fracturing. It cracked and held, but it didn't help. The blonde hair dragged around in the blood as her body sank to the floor, and Jill stared into the ugly face of the thing that had killed the woman.

It cocked its head like a curious dog and turned. It raced toward the door, but it didn't come out the door after her. It leaped up. It gripped the vent above the dirty washing machine beneath it and threw itself into the dark.

Jill backed up, twice, and stumbled on the step. She heard the vents groan in distress. She touched her communicator and warned, "Parker? Look out. There's something in the ducts."

And the one above her burst out the wall in a clang of metal. It hit the far wall with a clatter. Jill ducked and avoided losing her head to the tendril of nasty appendage it threw out of the duct at her.

It dripped slime and gore and came out torso first in a push-up motion. She fired at it and her foot hit the slime. She slipped. She grabbed for the railing and missed, and down she went.

She tumbled three steps on her butt as it rolled out of that vent atop her. It's butthole mouth opened to show sharp teeth. It dove for her face and she shouted, "NO!" And kicked it twice in the face.

It got her foot and twisted, spilling her back and doing a strange fish flopping, jerking, weird little dance until it could pour over her with its nasty tendrils.

It took her to floor in a spill of ooze and oily limbs while she tried to gather the strength to even scream.


	3. Episode 2: The Hair of a Hero

**Revelations:**

 **Mirror Mask**

* * *

 **Episode 2:**

 **The Hair of a Hero**

* * *

 **The Queen Zenobia**

* * *

Jill kicked, she struggled, she wedged her gun up under its ugly face as it attempted to eat her - and the echo of a gun blew its nasty mess all over her chest and neck in a wash of rot.

Parker?

She grunted as the body flopped atop her, "Nice timing."

"Well, no means no."

She glanced over the top of its ugly head. The lights flickered twice as the power surged to the ship. He was in a navy colored wet weather top, long sleeved, that was topped by a shoulder holster with a shiny gun and a black tactical vest packed with ammo. The one in his hand was loose, held to the side but at the ready. It likely fit in the holster on his thigh, worn over cargo pants in black.

The emblem on his chest was clear enough - A fist clenched around two lightning bolts and an olive branch. This was her liaison. He was United States Strategic Command - USSTRATCOM.

Jill spoke, cooly, "Your hair isn't service standard length."

It wasn't. It was long, rock star long, and shaggy. It fit the face, which was ridiculously handsome but didn't inspire confidence that he was military or reliable. He put a hand down to her and Jill took it, letting him pull her free of her dead attacker.

She noticed, as she rose, he had a knife tucked into the front of his vest as long as his forearm.

He followed the line of her gaze and remarked, "SOG."

She nodded, giving him a judging look. He met it, equally, keeping his face droll. Finally, she queried, "I'm sorry...but who the hell are you?"

And now he laughed, lightly, and kicked over the corpse of her attacker. He knelt, scanning the thing with his phone. He tapped some keys and took a picture. He rose, glancing at the fancy watch on his wrist, and replied, "Kennedy. Leon S. Kennedy."

Right. The hotshot attached to the Bio-Terror division of USSTRATCOM. The Wiz Kid that everyone was always talking about. He'd come back fresh from saving the First Kid and run off to be the big hero at Harvardville. He was something else, they said if he was also uptight and boring.

Hell, she actually liked that part about his reputation. She, herself, was regarded as uptight and boring.

Jill tugged her pistol free and gestured with her head, "I'm Jill Valentine."

"I know." He gave her a narrow look. It radiated condescension, "I'm your contact. I know who you are."

She pursed her lips, turning back down the stairs. "Alright. Well, I need your assistance. I've located my partner, but he's imprisoned. I need to get him free. The door is locked."

"Aren't you the "master of unlocking"?"

They held gazes. Jill gave him a bored expression. Finally, he shrugged, "Just what I heard."

"I heard you were the love child of John Lennon and Jesus."

His brows winged up. "Interesting. Not Jagger huh? Lennon?"

Jill gave him another bland expression and he shrugged, "Someone told me you could freeze a man to death with a single look. I think that ones true."

Jill rolled her eyes, "Well, I heard you could smite enemies with a toss of your perfect hair."

He blinked. His mouth twitched on a smile, "Not exactly. You wanna touch it though? No product, kid, just me."

She would not smile. She refused. She rolled her eyes. "Does anyone ever really find you charming?"

"...from time to time."

Jill gave him a look that tried to shrivel his scrotum where he stood. He kept his face blank, but he wanted to laugh as she told him, "Well, you're wasting your time with me. I'm not interested."

He muttered, chuckling, "Clearly."

She paused, looking at the bloody window. "...there was an altercation in there with the thing you killed. I think the woman is dead."

Leon tilted his head, considering, "We'll check it out. The captive is Chris Redfield?"

"Yes. He's upstairs. I need to get him free." She turned down a small off chute and eased open the door. It was a washroom, thick with the smell of laundry detergent, stagnant water, and rot. Blood seeped along the floor in curling tendrils toward the drain that waited. Clothes were half hung, half falling where they'd been abandoned. A basket sat atop a dryer, still filled with someone's underwear. A gathering of detergents was on the shelf behind it, some overturned, some splattered with blood.

A body was slumped against the wall in a wetsuit. The impact of the toss would most likely have killed her instantly if the monster hadn't torn her up first. Her enormous, overly endowed cleavage was freed from her wetsuit. It might have been titillating...if it wasn't topped by a decimated face covered in dripping hair.

The woman was dead, no getting around that, but Jill scanned her the Genesis just to be sure.

She caught Kennedy watching her with it and tilted her gaze at him, "Yes?"

"It's neato. Just saying." He moved into the room, picking gingerly over the scattered mess of shoes and clothes to kneel by the body waiting there.

Jill considered him, scanning him with the Genesis while he inspected the corpse. It gave her lots of information: He was 28 years old. He weighed 175 pounds. He was six foot tall (almost). His Body Mass Index was entirely within the normal range for a muscular adult male. His Body Fat Percentage was excellent at 7%. His heart rate was an athletically low 62 beats per minute, proving the fight on the stairs hadn't raised his blood pressure or upset him at all. He was, it seemed, in supreme physical condition.

And he said things like "neato."

She lowered the Genesis a little and it dinged, indicating he was free of infection. It was also nice enough to inform her that his body temperature suggested he had not copulated within the last 24 hours.

As if that were AT ALL relevant to the situation. Quint. He really thought he was a funny guy with the things he added to his gadgets. He'd have gotten a chuckle out of something like a "sperm counter indicator".

The Genesis, minus Quint's silly additions, was really a near perfect tool though.

The thermal imaging was incredible. Kennedy was clearly alive. She could see his body temperature in one feed, and when she clicked another, she could see his internal components: His heart, his veins, his muscles, and bones. She could follow the pathway from his lungs to his loins. It basically gave her his biological makeup in a blueprint.

Incredible. Quint? A genius...and a bit of a lecherous pervert.

Leon Kennedy's base body temperature was 96.7 degrees. His lungs were pristine - no sign of infiltrates or infection or shadows. His stomach was empty, she was honestly surprised she couldn't see his last meal in there. It gave measurements of his bones - fingers, arms, legs, pelvis. His waist was svelte and fitting for a man in excellent shape.

The Genesis paused at his pelvis. The machine beeped, reading. Was it going to speculate on the size of his di-

He coughed and Jill jerked it away from his pelvis. She felt amusement creep into her belly but ignored it.

He was also looking at her. She nearly dropped the Genesis when he remarked, "You using X-Ray vision on me, Valentine?"

She lowered it, giving him a narrow look. "Checking to see if you had a heart, I think."

He kinda liked her sass. He winked at her, watched it irritate her, and felt good about it.

And he added, "First looks free, sweetheart. Next one will cost you dinner."

Ugh. He was charming. She wasn't sure why that was annoying, but there it was. Jill gave him a droll look. He shrugged and gestured to the body on the floor.

"A waste of a perfectly good set of tits in my opinion," He rose, considering her, "Maybe this trend will catch on though. What do you think?"

Jill rolled her eyes and scanned the body with the Genesis. It beeped twice and told her the deceased was named Rachel Foley. Surprised, Jill remarked, "She's with the FBC."

Leon arched a brow, "No kidding?"

"Yeah. Why is she here?"

"Your guess is as good as mine." He started to move and Jill shook her head.

"Wait. Reach into her cleavage."

There was a long moment where Leon gave her the most deadpan expression. She tilted her head at him, blank-faced. They held gazes for so long that Jill actually broke first, "What?"

"You're kidding, right? Why would I do that?"

She rolled her eyes again, "The key we need is in her damn cleavage. I don't know why she put it there. Maybe it was safer than her boot? She's dressed like something out of a bad porno."

Leon glanced at the body and quipped, "Rachel Does Deep Sea Diving?"

Jill shook her head. He tried again, "Whore Ashore!- Rachel Goes Down?"

Her flat look encouraged him. He gave it one more shot, "Tits and Torpedos?"

Jill turned away, leaving him to chuckle. So, the rumors were wrong about that, she thought with a sigh, he was not at all aloof or uptight. His chuckling made her roll her eyes.

She cleared the rest of the room, checking for supplies, and listened to him mutter.

"Usually when I stick my hand in a woman's cleavage, she's at least still ALIVE..." He paused, sighed, and put his hand into Rachel's tremendous bosom, "Is it sad that I had to attach the word _usually_? Jesus in a purple pair of pants, I need a new job. In this case, Rachel, I do hope you stay dead. As I'm not looking to be your costar here."

Jill found a small box of shotgun shells on a shelf tucked into a laundry basket. She added them to her hip pack, curious where the gun was. Leon pulled his hand free with the little key for the Crew Quarters and helped himself to Rachel's empty pistol.

He rose, shuddering, "Jill?"

She turned to look at him and he held up the key triumphantly. "What do you think? Ooze Clues? Is there a mutt around here with paw prints to guide us to the right answers?"

He grinned.

She rolled her eyes again.

He was kind of an idiot.

Genius, her ass.

Leon eyed the ass in question as she circled the room. He wouldn't have done it to Claire, he realized, but Claire gave shit like a man and made things easier. But this one. This woman was so painfully uptight he could practically see the stick wedge up her ass that made her spine. He'd heard, of course, you had to be dead in their business not to know about Jill Valentine. But no one had mentioned the face.

Gorgeous. Big lips and limpid eyes in a shimmery blue. The face was good but the ass? The ass in that wet suit was extraordinary. The bad news? He'd heard about her skills..and her ass. Her ass was kinda legendary among the men in their business. One - because it was fantastic, and two - because no one ever... _ever..._ got a piece of it.

He watched it bend over as she poked around in a shelf and said, "You think there's a nerdy little guy somewhere that only highers models as agents?"

Jill shot him a look over her shoulder, "...what?"

"Look at you. You look like a naughty deep sea diving instructor. Like you're gonna teach me all about inhaling through your nose while you put my respirator in your mouth."

Ugh. He was about fifteen years old. She rolled her eyes and ignored him.

She sighed, turning back to flip through the little journal in the basket. It was a crew workers account of the fall of the ship. It was pretty much flowery passages, at first, about a relationship the crew member was having with a woman named Alma. But it got worse. It started describing the descent of things. It talked about people turning to the ooze they'd seen. It mentioned hiding out in the cafeteria.

It was splashed in blood at the end.

She was doubting they'd made it to the cafeteria.

She rose, glancing over her shoulder, "Agent Kennedy-"

"Leon."

She gave him a narrow look. He kept on smiling beguilingly. On a deep breath, she huffed, "Right. Kennedy, it would be best if we kept things as professional as possible. Tone down the awe-shucks a little."

"Just a little?" He lifted his gloved hand and indicated about an inch with his fingers, "How about a smidgen? How much is a smidgen anyway? Smaller than a little?"

Jill turned away, sighing. Ugh. He was increasingly annoying. He reminded her of a young C-

She froze the thought. No. Nope. No way. She was not going to compare this guy to a young Chris. Not here. Not now. Not ever. Chris was all business. He didn't bust her balls constantly.

"Work on that professionalism, Agent Kennedy."

"I'm not usually one to follow a ladies lead, but whatever tickles your pickle is alright with me, sweetheart."

Jill rolled her eyes.

She touched her communicator and signaled Parker, "Parker...I've rendezvoused with the agent from USSTRATCOM. We've located a key to the crew quarters. Hopefully, that will help us get to the room with Chris."

Parker came back, happily, "Roger I sent him after you. I'm glad he helped out."

Jill moved up the stairway, keeping her gun loose at her side. "So far, so good. Be right there."

As she moved, Leon shook his head like a dog coming out of water to stop staring at the ass. Seriously, it was ridiculous. Half heart, half bubble, half dick teasing delight in water resistant spandex. He kept expecting someone to pop out of the shadows and yell "gotcha!" and show him the camera recording them that meant she was an actress.

The idea made him snort.

After a moment, she glanced over her shoulder. Kennedy was following her, looking amused. She arched her brows. "What?"

"Just curious why he gets to be Parker and I have to go by Kennedy."

Jill gave him a cool glance. "Because he's my partner."

Brows arched, Leon mused, "And I'm...what?"

"A nuisance...and don't call me sweetheart."

"You got it, cookie."

Jill narrowed her eyes in a glare. Kennedy grinned happily.

She turned the corner and found Parker waiting for them. Leon chuckled, unflappable. He nodded to Parker and tossed the key.

The other man caught it and turned to the door where Chris was being held.

Jill said, "It will be a relief to get off this ship. It's making me sick."

Leon grinned, "It's pretty gross here. But admit it, you'll miss me a little."

She shook her head again, "Like a case of crabs."

He laughed. Parker glanced at them both in surprise. He didn't think he'd ever heard Jill Valentine be sarcastic like that. Curious about it, he took a moment to unlock the door.

Leon mused, "You always equate men with S.T.D.S, cookie?"

Jill actually shoved his arm, "When they're just as annoying, yes. One of those I can kill with pubicide."

"I'm a little upset that you keep picturing me near your bush, Jill. I find this whole conversation incredibly unprofessional. I just came here to work. I'm honestly feeling very attacked right now."

She stopped. She faced him with a stern look on her face, "Agent Kennedy-"

"Leon."

She was going to punch him. It was that simple. "Tone it down."

He hummed a few notes and went with a lower one as if he were finding his pitch. "Check. How's this?"

Parker laughed. He couldn't help himself. Jill gave him a dry look. "Don't encourage him, Parker. Please."

Parker shrugged once, "Apologies, Jill. It's...good to have some laughter."

Now she just felt like a bitch. Because she had to admit, Kennedy's crappy joking was keeping her mind off the horrors in this hellhole. She was...a little grateful he was such a juvenile.

What was the world coming to?!

The door opened.

She forgot about anything but the man in the chair.

"Chris!"

She dashed inside to grab for him. Her hand touched his slick arm. It slid across his shoulder...and knocked his head clean off.

She couldn't even shout in horror as his head split at the neck and rolled, bouncing twice, across the dirty floor. Parker said, softly, "Jill...the walls."

She stopped. She turned. She blinked.

The walls were done in yellow flags with muskets and greyhounds. _Il Veltro..._ the greyhound. They were gone. Dismantled. Dead. But they weren't. Clearly. They were here. Or had been. On this ship.

When?

There was a crackle of sound and Jack Norman, the leader of Veltro, filled the room with his voice. " _We are Veltro, vengeful messengers from the depths of the Inferno. Abandon hope all ye who enter here."_

Kennedy remarked, softly, "Who the fuck is this guy?"

And the room started to seep with smoke. He cursed. He turned for the door and the sound of it split the air. The assailant tried to take him out quickly and Leon punched them in the face, fighting with them for the gun.

They turned, elbowed him in the gut, and kneed him in the crotch. He staggered, jerked on their arm, and threw them away. But it didn't matter. They turned back and their gun whipped him across the face and put him on his ass, out like a light.

Parker grabbed for the masked assailant and went down like a stone, coughing. Jill staggered, gasped, "Where's Chris?! What have you done with him!?"

And she fell to her face on the floor, struggling as the gas penetrated and stole her breath. The masked figure paused to stare down at Kennedy and shake their head. They turned their gaze toward her and spoke, through a filter that altered their voice, "Ms. Valentine...it's time you learned...the truth. I will show you...what lies beneath."

Jill grabbed for their boot, missed, and tumbled into the dark.

* * *

 **Post Note:** _Thus brings to the end our brief time on the Queen Zenobia. That's right. This is where I step away from the canon to discover what waits beyond it. A remote location. No hope. No help. No time. A cult. A curse. A plagas forgot. And a mastermind we never expected. It's just them against the world - and the world takes no prisoners._

 _Let the cleansing begin._


	4. Episode 3: The Thing

**Revelations:**

 **Mirror Mask**

* * *

 **Episode 3:**

 **The Thing**

* * *

 **The Middle of Nowhere**

* * *

Honestly, whoever was groaning needed to shut the fuck up.

It took a second to realize it was him. He was the one groaning.

The thought brought his eyes open in narrow slits. He felt like he was going to toss his cookies and gripped the soft cloth beneath him to fight the urge.

The ache started in the back of his skull. It felt like a tooth that was infected or a hangover that never ended.

Was he drunk?

No. No, he wasn't. He was lying on a hard cot in a cold room. His wavering vision came together as Leon made sense out of his situation. A room filled with flags and a fake Chris Redfield, a ship with a sexy little thing in a wet suit that hated his guts, and gas. Gas under the door. Gas that made the world swim. Gas that made him weak.

The man in the gas mask had whipped his ass. Made sense, considering he was subjected to whatever nerve agent had made them all face plant and wake up...here. Where was here?

He lifted a hand to gingerly touch the side of his head. The goose egg there made him wince and hiss. That was the headache. A hard pistol whip to the face was the culprit.

That's what he got for trying to fight back.

Leon rolled his jaw, loosening it, checking for a concussion or broken bones. It felt ok. It was sore as hell, but he didn't think he was operating with a cracked nugget.

Where the sexy little thing in the wet suit?

What was her name?

Valentine. It was a good name, considering she had a heart shaped ass. Wincing, he realized he was objectifying her because she was so uptight. It was completely unprofessional...as if he'd ever really given two wet shits about professionalism. But she was just fun to poke at. She looked at him like he was disgusting.

It was a new feeling for him when it came to a woman. He was lots of things in this business. "The Wiz Kid", the one gun wonder, the guy with balls of steel. He was rising up through the ranks as the best in the business. He was respected, feared, whispered about, and revered. He was also, in the right circles, a bit of a lothario.

The ladies? They just kinda loved him. It wasn't his fault. He was charming without trying. He knew how to make them laugh, how to make them giggle, how to make them love him. He just did.

And then along came Jill Valentine.

She thought he was annoying and rolled her eyes a lot. She called him a "nuisance". He wanted to make her giggle just to prove he could. He wondered if she knew how hot that ice queen thing was to a guy who never got turned down.

He blinked, chuckling a little. It didn't hurt that she was fucking gorgeous. That wet suit made her look like something out of a porno. Forget Rachel, with those tits hanging out and that girl at the FBC...what was her name? The one that was always licking lollipops when he was at the BSAA for shared briefings. Jessica...something or another.

She was OBVIOUS. In capital letters. She was the type that knew what she was doing. She was always throwing herself at Redfield in a some weird attempt to seduce him.

She was like a Playboy Bunny. You looked, because you had a dick and she was gorgeous, you looked...but she didn't linger in your head. You just moved on. She was too obvious to be intriguing.

Jill Valentine? She didn't try to get your attention. She wasn't interested in you to start with. She wasn't a bitch, not unless pressed, but she wasn't out there shopping for dick either. She was just gorgeous because that's what she was. She was understated. No makeup. No effort. But downplaying it didn't make it less clear that she was a centerfold in a wet suit.

He paused, letting his eyes open completely. He was lying on a bed in a cold room, kidnapped or something, and thinking about Jill Valentine. Why? It was easier than getting up.

True story.

He rolled to his feet, grunting. What was strange? He was fully dressed still. They hadn't taken his tactical vest - or any of his grenades or spare ammo. They hadn't taken his gun, either of them, as one was tucked into his thigh holster and the other his shoulder. His SOG was still tucked into his vest and waiting to cut up bad guys.

They'd even hung a coat on the rack by the door for him...with a note stuck to it.

It was a Voodoo Tactical Field Jacket in black. It was made to be worn in arctic climates. What kind of bad guy gave him the means to protect himself from both enemies and the elements?

It didn't matter, because he was wearing it. This place was freezing.

The room was stark, cold, and clearly a medical bay of some kind. There was an IV pole and an empty bag of fluids on the pole beside the bed and bare, whitewashed walls. The floor was metal and radiated the subzero temperatures beneath. His feet clanged as he walked, leaving out the possibility of silent movement.

Leon inspected the jacket, making sure there weren't any hidden booby traps in it or something. Of course, he couldn't be sure there wasn't some kind of poison in the lining, but it seemed a stupid way to kill someone when he'd clearly been at their mercy unconscious. If they wanted him dead, surely he'd be dead by now.

He put on the jacket and was instantly warmer. The pockets gathered some of his gear from his vest even though he zipped the coat enough to still leave access to his chest. He tugged the 9mm off his thigh and moved to the one door in the room.

He was just about to ease it open when his ear buzzed.

Surprised, he lifted a hand - and found a communicator snuggled happily in his ear canal.

He blinked, twice, and pressed it. "...to whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?"

The voice that came back wasn't a bad guy...even if they weren't terribly fond of him. "Kennedy?"

He shook his head, lightly, "Jill Valentine. I was just thinking of you. It's colder than a well digger's ass in here. It must suit you down to the ground."

He could practically HEAR her eyes roll. "...I see the cold hasn't frozen off your funny bone."

He laughed now, delighted, "I have lots of those, kiddo. Maybe when I find you, we can locate yours and tickle it."

There was a loud sigh before she answered, "Let's start with figuring out where we are. Any clues on your end?"

There was a buzz and a third voice joined them. "Jill?" That Italian accent. Leon had to admit, it was entertaining.

So he answered, "Parker, my man, welcome to the club. I have to admit, this is the least exciting three-way I've ever been a part of."

Again, he could hear Jill sigh. She spoke into the silence after Parker laughed, "Ignore him. Parker, do you know where you are?"

Parker came back, sounding amused, "No. I woke up in a naked room."

And Leon piped in, "Really? I woke up naked. I'm still searching for my dick. I think it escaped up my ass to protect itself from the cold."

Parker laughed. Jill sighed, "Kennedy? Do some reconnaissance and shut up."

Leon chortled and tried the handle on his door. Nothing. It was locked. Apparently, their doors were as well. Jill was the first one to offer a way out. She had her lock picks and set about opening her own door.

In her room, she listened to Leon and Parker speculate about their location. Kennedy - the guy was as professional as a farting clown. He was all wink, wink, nudge, nudge. He was unflappable. He really was not at all concerned that they'd woken up in the middle of nowhere.

Someone had extracted all three of them from that ship. The question was why?

There was a crackle of sound and a voice filled the room. They all fell silent to listen.

A pop and a hiss brought an end to the strange artificial emptiness around them. "The Norse myths are the myths of a chilly place, with long, long winter nights and endless summer days, myths of a people who did not entirely trust or even like their gods, although they respected and feared them."

Jill kept carefully picking at the lock, listening. What was it with bad guys and their attachment to the dark and dismal?

The tumblers turned, clicking each segment of the lock into place as she went.

And the voice went on, "Someday – whenever the Norns, those inscrutable spinners of fate, decree it – there shall come a Great Winter- unlike any other the world has yet seen. The biting winds will blow snows from all directions, and the warmth of the sun will fail, plunging the earth into unprecedented cold. This winter shall last for the length of three normal winters, with no summers in between. Mankind will become so desperate for food and other necessities of life that all laws and morals will fall away, leaving only the bare struggle for survival. It will be an age of swords and axes; brother will slay brother, father will slay son, and son will slay father."

Into her ear, Kennedy murmured, "...sounds like a fucking party."

And Parker returned, "... I must have lost my RSVP."

The voice added, "The wolves Skoll and Hati, who have hunted the sun and the moon through the skies since the beginning of time, will at last catch their prey."

The lock clicked open, Jill eased the door wider to peer into the crack it made, and the voice added, "Are you the wolf...or the prey?"

The door was ripped out of her hand before she could do more than focus her eye through the crack. The thing that waited wasn't human. It may have been, once, before science had made it a monster. It was half melted nightmare, half tortured horror. It looked like Munch's The Scream if it had stood in a wax museum.

It was tall and hunched, it's face frozen in a perpetual howl. It had claws that dragged the ground from its ape-like arms. Its chest was open, pinned that way with clips as if it had stood up from the surgery table and left in mid-procedure, you could see the heart beating inside the naked cavity while the blood pooled and spilled down its bloated belly.

It had two faces on that melted mess of its body. One lodged in the chest with eyeballs missing that dangled like perverted ornaments on the ruined skin. And one on its neck that was cocked to the side, stuck screaming as if it were howling for its own relief from the suffering forced upon it. Teeth lined the open mouth, chomping and drooling. They ringed it, from one end to the other in the macabre oval, sharp and deadly.

Jill missed losing her face as she scrambled back, its claws swiped a breath from her nose, and she kicked the door shut on it. It hit the heavy metal restraint and roared. The roar was high pitched, echoing, like the laughter of a hyena across the savannah. It hit the metal container where they were strapped and bounced back, shaking the walls.

In her ear, Leon spoke, and for the first time he didn't sound amused, "You alright?"

She answered, quietly, "For the moment. I can't get out of this room."

"You don't have any weapons?" He sounded surprised.

Jill replied, hoarsely, "Nope. Do you?"

"All of them."

Parker added, softly, "Me as well. All of them."

Damnit. DAMNIT. Someone was fucking with her. Why? Who? Did they want to see if she could survive without weapons?

She was in a blue tank top and thermal leggings. Someone had tucked her legs into knee-high camel brown boots. She was freezing her ass off and weaponless, underdressed and in trouble. The thing at the door was running its full weight into the metal.

Leon came back to her, coolly, "I'm gonna make some noise and bring it this way."

Surprised, Jill replied, "Why?!"

"I need this door open. They left you your lockpicks. They took your weapons. They left us no way out but gave us our weapons. They want us to fight this thing and save you."

UGH. Jill shook her head, "...that's fucking sexist as hell."

"Maybe so. But somebody has to play Skoll and Hati here, Jill. And someone has to be the prey."

Shit.

She shook her head again, "...it's Valentine."

"Whatever. Stay in that goddamn room and don't be a hero."

He backed up. In her ear, Parker said, "I'll make noise as well. Whoever gets out first, find the other."

"Deal. And keep it the fuck away from Jill." Leon kicked his door. He kicked it again. He shouted. Parker did the same.

Leon shifted and kicked the wall. The clangs were so loud that you'd have heard it on mars. Jill remained quiet where she was, listening. Eventually, the noise worked. It drew the thing off her door and she heard it race down the hallway.

Stay put, he'd said, but she didn't. Who did he think she was?

Jill Valentine followed no man's lead...it just wasn't her style.

* * *

Naturally, the thing came for Leon first. Why not? It was his luck.

It was strong enough to knock the door clear off its hinges, telling him that Jill had been held somewhere with a sturdier door. Again, someone was giving them the chance to save her. Why?

It came for him so fast that he barely had time to comprehend that it moved like a gorilla, awkward, dragging its massive arms, but it was speedy. He kicked over the cot when it threw one of those arms at him and ducked behind it. It slapped the metal frame and echoed it around the small room.

On his butt, Leon kicked the bed toward it. It spun, scraping the floor in a squeal of metal, and Leon shot it from the floor while it stopped the ambush. The bullet took it in one of those screaming faces, but it didn't slow it down. He lined up another shot at that exposed heart...and realized it wasn't the heart at all. It was the stomach.

The stomach was in the chest. Why? And why was it pulsing?

Something was SQUIRMING in that chest. He aimed at it and the thing threw its arm at him again. He ducked, it slapped the wall above his head, and Leon shot it in the stomach.

Blood and pus erupted, stinking like foul farts in a room full of stinky cheese, and Leon gagged a little at the stench. But the stomach rolled again, the thing wailed, and it came for him.

It rushed him.

He shot it twice more in the stomach and watched that crap fly. The good news? It didn't like the pain. It recoiled, shrieking. The bad news? The blood was ACID. It sizzled and stunk where it struck. It left blackened marks on the floor where it landed.

He shot it again as it ran for the door and it ducked left and raced away, squealing.

Into his headset, he said, "Parker?"

"Yes?"

"You're up, pal."

"Fantastic."

Leon rose from the ground, glancing down at the smoking smears of crap that had erupted from the thing. "Jill? Did you stay put?"

She came back to him, sounding droll, "I don't stay put, Kennedy. I'm not a dog."

"So you're weaponless and running around a strange area with a monster hunting you?"

"You got a better idea?"

He shook his head, moving to the doorway. It was time to find her. Why didn't anyone ever listen to him?

He sighed and lamented, "...women."

* * *

Jill eased open the door and out into the small hallway. She went the opposite direction of the thing, hurrying quickly. The first open door, Jill ducked through and found some kind of infirmary. It was four beds deep with dead bodies. Dead. Half frozen. Some were open like they'd been mid-operation. Some were stuck in a tableau of torture. There were tools poised above them with things aimed at their exposed cavities.

One was a woman, slashed open at the hips, with her uterus and her small bowel removed and lying on the metal tray beside her. She was chained to the headboard, her face wrenched in horror and pain, her eyes open and screaming. Her mouth left wide in a silent plea for mercy.

They'd hacked these people up without anesthetic. Her chest was cracked and her stomach missing, ripped apart as if something had torn through it to birth itself into the frigid air.

The man beside her was split from tits to asshole. He was flayed wide, pinned open and hooked up like someone was securing a moth to a spit. His flesh worked like a blanket, opened and offering a gaze into his innards. His arms were bound like the woman, his face collapsed in horrible, horrifying, brutal suffering. His naked boned chest was cracked and jagged, jutting into his organs and his lungs. His heart was half eaten, his stomach ripped apart like the woman.

Jill gagged before she realized it. She threw her hand to her mouth and turned away, taking small shallow breaths. She would not vomit. She would not vomit She would _not vomit._

Her eyes trailed to the row of counters on the other side of the room. Things were trapped inside gelatinous goop. They looked like spiders made of human flesh with rows of teeth. Their were eyes floating among the teeth, watching her. One had half of a human head growing off its dozen legged form. They were bulbous and looked like bubbles made of tissue lumping all over their small forms.

The biggest one was about the size of a small cat.

She eyed them, stepping forward to see a little better in the flickering light, and her gaze rolled to the final bed. A woman bent in half, cracked at the spine as if someone had snapped her. Her naked breasts and arms were exposed, her head thrown back like she was in the throws of a good fuck...but she wasn't. She was bursting with legs like the spiders in the jars. Eight legs exploded out of her savaged torso beneath her breasts, that had grown nipples like knives above them. Teeth and moves, at least a dozen, were woven among the legs - open and horrible. Her legs dragged on the floor, forgotten, much like she was, simply becoming an incubator for the thing that grew out of her.

What had happened here?

What madness lurked in this frozen nightmare?

She turned toward the one door in the infirmary, hoping to find a coat perhaps in an office, when she saw what lay on the table beside it. A small table, like an exam tray almost. Small, tiny, just big enough for a baby.

Or what was left of one.

It was soaked in blood. Its face had split open like a ripe melon. Teeth lined the interior of the skull and turned the head into a killer somehow. The eyes were blue but bulging, soaking in blood in the devastated cavities. The nose has ripped in two, showing bone and bloody sinus beneath. The mouth was twisted in a terrible cry.

The little body was peppered in tiny appendages, almost like warts, they looked like suction cups on the bottom of the leg of a squid. They were filled with mouths and teeth. The baby was opened up at the waist like the adults. Someone had cut her open to dig inside of her. Her heart lay on the tray beside her, rotted and missing chunks.

She had a little pink bunny gripping in one gruesome hand. What was left of the onesie that she wore had a unicorn soaked in blood...and the named Maisy.

She was someone's baby girl.

Jill started to open the door beside the tray and the baby moved. It moved and grabbed for her. It made a small squeal and reached one tiny hand with the beginning of a claw toward her, snapping all those teeth.

Jill grabbed the scissors on the tray beside it and stabbed it right in its twisted little grin. She stabbed it while it squealed. When it kept on reaching for her, she ripped the scissors free and thrust them into the heart.

It jerked, it gasped, it vomited a geyser of blood that flew up as if a volcano erupted. She backed off, stumbling, and it splattered down like rain around the tiny corpse. The baby gasped and...cried. It cried, weeping wildly like a hungry infant should, and died twitching in the bath of blood.

Jill's hand flew over her mouth. She shook her head. The baby stared at her, sightless, finally dead.

It was mercy.

It was mercy.

It was- Jill turned, stumbling, and threw up the empty bile in her stomach in the sink against the far wall.

She gagged and shivered, shaking, trying to stifle the pain and grief that ringed around her chest. The horror lingered in her throat nearly as disgusting as the vomit. But she touched her ear and whispered, hoarsely, "You can't kill it unless you shoot it in the fucking heart."

She stared at her haggard reflection in the cracked mirror above the sink and knew she'd have nightmares about that baby for the rest of her life.

* * *

 **Post Note:** _Off and running. This story? Entirely for me. So naturally, it's where my brain wants to dwell. It's horror, so beware the gore._


	5. Episode 4: Forsaken

**A/N:** _To answer the question, I'm reworking alot of my stuff that I've lost my way on. Most of my older works are getting a face lift or a rewrite._

* * *

 **Revelations:**

 **Mirror Mask**

* * *

 **Episode 4:**

 **Forsaken**

* * *

 **The Middle of Nowhere**

* * *

It didn't take long for her to finish. She hadn't eaten, so there was nothing to really throw up. She heaved, dryly, and shivered. Her sweaty face haunted her in the mirror above the sink.

Her hand grabbed blindly at the towel beside it and tossed it over the dead baby. She couldn't, ever, see it again. She couldn't. She just...she couldn't. They called her any number of names in her life: Frigid Witch. The Ice Queen. No One's Valentine. Stitched at the Knees. Uptight Cunt. The Bitch in Blue.

But she wasn't. She wasn't at all. She just...didn't let it in. Anything. If she did, she ended up throwing up over a sink in a frozen death trap.

The quiet drew out until finally, to her surprise, Leon spoke softly, "...are you alright?"

She had forgotten to mute her fucking communicator. Awesome. Fantastic. Shit in a circle of pigeons made of popcorn and farts...she'd thrown up where they BOTH could hear her. Leon Kennedy had just heard her barf.

It was a fate worse than death.

Worse yet? Kennedy sounded, for the first time, sympathetic. He was going to start putting her in the "delicate girl" file.

He tried again, gently, "Jill?"

She barked, coldly, "I'm fine. Alright? There's some kind of lab here and I just...the people are...it's bad."

"Do you want to-"

"I don't want to talk about it, alright?" Jill snapped, "Leave it be."

The quiet drew out for a minute as she relearned how to breathe. Parker said, into the ensuing discomfort, "Anyone know any good knock knock jokes?"

And Leon came back, "Got some puns."

Parker answered, sounding pained, "I might die here, Leon. But I don't want to die of embarrassment for you first."

Leon chuckled, unflappable, "The puns are good, Luciani. Good. Don't hate on the puns."

He laughed. Parker laughed. Jill? Still silent.

She was something else. Leon wanted to shake her to see if the ice fell out of her ass when he did. Lord, it had to physically hurt to be that uptight.

What had she seen to make her blow chunks? She was uptight, sure, but she was also a pro. It had to be bad to put her hunched over and tossing her cookies.

What kind of hell hole were they in here?

The **Voice** filled her ears as she hunkered over the sink, "Skoll - the one who mocks. Hati - the one who hates. So little recognition really. They are two wolves who are only mentioned in passing references that have to do with their pursuing the sun (Sol) and moon (Mani), through the sky in hopes of devouring them. At Ragnarok, the downfall of the cosmos, they catch their prey as the heavens and earth darken and collapse."

Jill shook her head, considering. The one who mocks...Kennedy? Was she the one who hates? In which case...who was Parker? Or was she was the prey? Was she meant to die here? Or battle at "Ragnarok"? There was no hope but to find the answers. She could speculate all day.

Whatever game this was, it was going to be played by the rules of their captor, that much was clear.

The Voice came again, distinctly distorted, impossible to know if it was male or female. This time the stanza of a poem. It was entirely spoken in Old Norse.

The good news? After it was over, Leon Kennedy proved he wasn't just a pretty face and translated.

 _Skoll is the name of the wolf_

 _Who follows the shining priest_

 _Into the desolate forest,_

 _And the other is Hati,_

 _Hróðvitnir's son,_

 _Who chases the bright bride of the sky._

Leon paused, considering. What was the story they were telling here? Who were the wolves?

What was curious about it?

Into his headset, he said, "The noun used for Skoll's prey, _goði_ translates to "priest". It's masculine. And the noun used for Hati's prey, _brúðr, or_ "bride" is feminine. Since Mani (the moon) is male, and Sol (the sun) is female, the wording of this stanza strongly suggests that Skoll hunts the moon and Hati the sun."

Jill came back to him, curious, "Is gender assigned to the wolves themselves?"

Leon answered, turning a corner and clearing it. He spoke low and soft, "Both are male in the mythology. The sons of Fenrir."

Parker filled in the silence, "Fenrir?"

To their surprise, the answer was blasted from the speakers around them. "Fenrir is the most famous wolf in history. He is the son of Loki, the god of mischief. He was bound to a rock and awaits his rise to power. He consumes all in his path with jaws open between earth and heavens. He will devour Odin, and help bring about the end of the world."

Leon spoke with the first edge of anger she'd ever heard from him, "These bad guys and the end of the world. What's so wrong with the world?"

And the voice spoke again, "What will rise from the waves when the Midgard Serpent releases the world and brings the end, will be a new race. Two shall remain to birth a new beginning. Through destruction, emerges evolution."

Leon spoke again, surprising Jill. Was he taunting their captor? "Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos."

The voice responded, "Civilization is like a thin layer of ice on an ocean of chaos and darkness."

He was so quiet that Jill thought he might not answer, but he did, softly, "When tempest-tossed, embrace chaos."

The voice responded, almost gently, "...never could I breathe love...if I did not first learn...to inhale a little chaos."

The quiet stretched. Parker filled it, "Do you know our captor?"

Leon came back, sounding perplexed, "I don't know. I'm starting to think this might be personal."

Jill sighed, "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, Kennedy."

Leon came back, sounding amused, "You jealous, Valentine? You want me to scorn you instead?"

The Voice informed them, "Do not waste time on idle speculation. Find the answers. Free yourselves. You're running out of time. Here? Now? It is not infinite. Soon the stars will go out, and there will be nothing but darkness and desolation."

Leon murmured, "Such a jolly place."

Parker laughed, lightly, "Where is my chance? I can't hear a thing."

And Jill responded, "I know. It's so quiet. I'm gonna poke around a bit and see what else is in this hallway."

Leon hissed, softly, "Stay _there_ , Jill. Stop being stupid."

"Why? Are you the only one who can be?" She finished searching the office in the infirmary, finding it empty. But there was a sealed doctor's coat in a package. She slipped it on, placing the scissors in one of the white pockets. It was a shitty weapon, but at least she wasn't bare handed anymore. She had to get out of this room.

She had to.

She couldn't stay here and look at these flayed corpses anymore.

She eased open the door, shifting around the frame. She padded barefoot along the floor, hating the cold. She came around the corner in the hallway and froze - face to face with an enormous wolf.

It was white. It was watching her with blue eyes. She held both hands up.

Maybe Hati and Skoll were actual wolves. Maybe they were all the prey.

The wolf watched her. Jill said nothing, ignoring the herald of Kennedy in her ear pleading with her to stay put. She showed herself unarmed. It was female, she could tell that because it didn't have a dick on its beautiful form. It looked as startled as Jill about their encounter.

It was also as neutral as anything in the world would ever be. If Jill let her run, the wolf would run. If Jill attacked, the wolf would kill her for it. Jill crouched down, submissively, offering nothing aggressive.

And the wolf moved closer to sniff her. Her heart sped up but she kept her hands up and harmless. It sniffed her hair, snarfling behind her ears. Jill didn't so much as move a muscle.

It licked her ear.

Jill lifted her head, meeting her eyes from the crouch. It gave her a knowing look and Jill whispered, "Run girl. Ok? Run. While you can."

The wolf paced twice, twitched her ears, and bounded down the other hallway.

Jill leaned on the wall, relearning how to breathe.

Lord. What was this place?

She peeked into another set of doors and found a kennel. It was rank. It made her crinkle her nose. There were no more dogs or animals alive in it. That part was instantly clear. The walls were dripping with blood and ectopic fluid.

Something was pulsing on the ground of the kennel, farting clouds of stench and stinking. Jill eased the door closed and backed away, shaking her head. She hurried down the hallway after the wolf. What choice did she have?

She was NOT crossing through the kennel. Nope. She'd take her chances with the four-legged version and not the goopy, blubbery stinking one. It was like Gizmo versus a gremlin. She'd take her chance with Gizmo.

The wolf emerged there, circling. It eyed her. She eyed her back. And the wolf turned and ran again.

Getting the feeling she wanted Jill to follow her, Jill did just that. She eased down the cold steel corridor. The wall was smeared in blood. Like someone had tried to run and left a trail behind it.

The blood was still wet, still fresh, and still dripping. She wanted to turn back, but she kept on going.

* * *

Leon emerged into a small lab. It was lit up and warm, like it had recently been in use. The walls were lined with photographs and formulas and test results.

A flickering lighted board showed X-Rays and spouted medical jargon at him as he scanned it. The X-Ray showed something growing inside the chest cavity of the person in the film. It was inside the stomach and the heart. Whatever was invading things, it was incubating like a parasite within their body.

He scanned the reports hanging on the wall, inspecting the data. It read a lot like plagas. He remarked, "I think it's connected to the plagas..."

It was Parker who answered him, "Remind me."

Leon answered, "Plagas are a genus of macroparasites native to Spain, where they are known as " _Las Plagas_ ", the name borrows from the Latin word meaning " _plagues_ ". They infected, they murder, they control." He scanned the data, brow furrowing, "There are three types that I'm aware of - and they are either subordinate or dominant. Type A is a simple type. Like a zombie...they maintain human form but are stronger, faster..."

He paused, eyeing the research on the wall. "B and C are mutated, more unilaterally the further you go. They retain some human attributes but are fully bonded to the parasite."

It was Jill that spoke now, "The thing that's chasing us...it's not human. It is, but it's mutated. But it's nothing...nothing next to what they were doing to people. I found..." She trailed off.

Parker encouraged her, "Go on."

"...I found a room where they were experimenting. Some kind of infirmary or something. Whatever it is g-"

Leon cut her off, "Incubating. It's incubating inside them."

Jill spoke again, hoarsely, "Yeah. And they were cutting it out and trying to figure out the why and wherefore...obviously they failed. I think someone wants us to finish it."

Leon shifted to study the photos on the board. People in mid-conversion. It was horrible. From melting faces to mutated forms. It was a horror show on a cork board.

He shook his head, "The plagas were sensitive to light. My guess? We're somewhere dark. Really dark. Where we'll be lucky to find any daylight at all."

Jill spoke again, softly, "So they can mutate to maximum efficiency."

"And mate. Mutate and mate. Until they're the perfect killer." Leon sounded almost wry about it. What choice was there? Wry amusement or complete and utter fear?

Parker said, breathlessly, " _Figlio di puttana_."

And Leon said back, "You got that right. Son of a bitch just about covers it."

He turned back to the test tubes mounted on the wall. Various stages of conversion. A half man. A half monster. A spider with two heads. A dog in the middle of splitting in half to reveal another dog somehow fused inside of it and a skull rising from that one with teeth and hair in the eye sockets.

It was John Carpenter bad.

Leon mused, quietly, "Anyone ever seen _The Thing_?"

Parker cursed again in Italian. Jill whispered, "...no. Why?"

"You're lucky. If you had, you wouldn't be so willing to head out of hiding. You'd be staying put like I told you. Not wandering around barefoot and weaponless. Fire, sunlight, those are only chances here. We need someone to chase the sun, alright. Because the moon is going to get us killed."

Jill filled the silence that spread between them, "I don't know where you are. Even if I was to wait, you could be on the other side of the goddamn town or something."

She had a point. Leon eased over to a computer, tapping keys until it lit up. The power was still on, at least to this room, so he was able to click around on the desktop, looking for clues.

"The radio distance on your coms is what?"

Parker said, "Five miles, give or take."

"Yeah," Jill sighed in his ear, "See? Waiting is stupid. I need to move. We all do. It's the only chance we have."

Leon clicked on a file and it opened, showing a rapid progression of the thing that had attacked him. It was a handsome fellow named John Davies. He was talking into the camera about the testing.

He was giving a run down of the procedure to evacuate the chest cavity of an infected dog. He was pointing to the thing on the table. It looked like a plagas filled with teeth and eyes. It was blinking at him, pinned down by nails in its appendages.

He pointed, he informed. He pointed, he informed. He talked about infection ratios and acidic flesh. He mentioned it needed to put an egg in your open sinuses to infect you. It didn't have to be your mouth. It would work in your nose or your eyes. Or your ears. He laughed, looking amused, "It might work in your ass!"

Awesome.

Leon mused, "You guys hearing this?"

Parker responded, "Yes." Jill grunted. He guessed that meant yes.

And Leon sighed, "That ass is too fine to be have a monster blow its load up it, Jill. You know what I'm saying? Stay put and wait for me."

She said nothing. Parker laughed. She was a tough nut to crack. But they'd get there.

Leon printed out some pages and tucked them into his pocket. He was just raiding another file when Parker let out a shout. Apparently, their evil friend had finally found him.

The odd part? Leon heard him shout in his ears and in the building. He paused, listening.

The struggle was loud. Parker was grunting. There was the boom of his gun - four times. Jill called, loudly, "Parker! You heard him! Fire!"

The roar of the thing was coupled with the boom of a grenade. That worked too, Leon mused, hurrying down the hallway toward the commotion. He was in mid step when it lumbered around a corner, flaming, burning, and shrieking.

Leon shot it where it lumbered, right in its pulsing stomach. The Magnum sent it over onto its back, shrieking and stinking. The flames WHOOSHED and consumed it, it tossed and wailed, and went still - crackling and heavy with the stench of roasting rot.

Parker rounded the corner, bleeding from the forehead, but alright. He glanced at it and at Leon. "Interesting. Why put us together and leave her out there alone?"

Leon shrugged, holding his gaze. "So we can save her. I love a good damsel in distress. Jill? You give me a kiss if I save you?"

Jill sighed heavily. He grinned. Parker shook his head, "She'll likely kill you instead, my friend."

"Oh, I'm gonna get her to laugh. I promise you." Leon inspected the burning mess, cringing. "It smells like rotten milk."

Parker nodded, "And old meat."

Leon sniffed again, "And dirty unwashed ass."

He waited, but Jill was radio silent. She was something else. He wondered if the stick up her ass kept her upright when she was sleeping. Amused at himself, Leon gestured with his head.

They split down the hallway together, moving with their guns ready. Parker kept glancing at him until Leon finally intoned, "Sup?"

Parker shook his head, lightly, and killed the transmission to his ear. Leon did the same, curious. The italian agent sighed and speculated, "What if she's infected?"

Surprised by the thought, Leon paused, "...Jill?"

Parker nodded, lifting a hand, "Hear me out...we wake up, armed, clothed, contained in the same part of the building. Jill is unarmed, alone, and isolated. Why? Unless the captor made it so she's the person who holds the answers."

Leon froze, head tilting, "Jesus. You're suggesting they might want us to cut her open to find the answers?"

Parker shrugged, "Hati and Skoll right? There are only two of them. We're both left to fight, she's stripped to be the prey. What other reason is there?"

Jill buzzed into their ears as they stared at each other, "Why the radio silence? What did you find?"

Leon turned his com back on, shaking his head at Parker, "Nothing. We were just discussing the ramifications of getting a boner in subzero temperatures."

Jill sighed.

And he added, "Would a frozen boner cut glass? What do you think?"

She didn't even respond. He smirked but gave Parker a serious expression. He wasn't entirely sure that it didn't make perfect sense.

Was Jill infected?

How long did they have to find her and get it out of her? If she was infected, would she turn sooner or later? The warrior in him even had the thought about putting her down on sight, to spare her. But it was quickly shoved away by common sense: they didn't know she was infected. She was his ALLY here. He didn't kill his allies.

Even if part of him was afraid they'd become the enemy.

It was always a gamble playing a game by someone else's rules.

* * *

The wolf led her down the bloody hallway. She paused, to make sure she was following. Jill called, softly, "Where are you taking me, pretty girl?"

The wolf paused at a door and let out a low whine from her furry throat. Jill glanced at the door and arched her brows, "You want me to go in there?"

The wolf circled three times.

She took that as a yes and eased open the door.

On the floor, chained up like a dog, a small girl lay. She was soaked in blood in a formerly white nightgown. Her blonde hair was saturated pink in places while chunks of something foul clung to her skin.

Jill froze, looking at her. A handful of moments passed before the breath in her lungs pushed free into the frigid air.

Not just hers...but the girl's as well. Jill moved swiftly, speaking sharp and fast, "Oh my god! Oh my _god..._ Kennedy, Parker...find us. Hurry."

"Jill?" Leon's voice sounded so far away. How far were they? She needed them here yesterday...because the little girl covered in blood was still alive.

Jill responded, desperately, "I don't know how long she has. She's chained to the floor. I need help. Parker? I need help. There's blood everywhere."

Leon's voice responded, "Directions, Jill. Something to help us find you. Anything stand out?"

Parker came back to her, sounding worried, "We're hurrying, Jill. I promise. Try to guide us."

The voice came over the speakers, loud and close, "Woman to man. Woman to child. Warrior to mate. What darkness waits when the sun is swallowed? What terror fills the void?"

She started to answer, and the little girl in her arms opened one eye. It locked on Jill's face and held there, glassy, blue, and bright.

Jill whispered, gently, "It's ok. It's alright. Are you hurt?"

The little girl opened her mouth and started screaming...and the world went black around them. Just like that, instant darkness.


	6. Chapter 5: Tundra

**Revelations:**

 **Mirror Mask**

* * *

 **Episode 5:**

 **Tundra**

* * *

 **The Middle of Nowhere**

* * *

There's nothing quite like the inability of man to fight in the dark.

With the absence of visual guidance, the complete and utter panic sets in almost instantly. It leaves the mind unwilling to adjust, at first, and exists only in a state of complete and total survival. Without question, the first response to saturating darkness is the bodies willingness to cower, hide, and await the arrival of the light again.

For Leon and Parker, there was no time for the mind to tell the body to hide.

The things in the dark weren't going to let them cower.

It was fight or die.

The flash of muzzle worked to guide each man through the layers of obscurity. When one fired, the other rotated to align himself to the back of his companion. They circled, picking off sounds with bullets until they were able to duck inside an open doorway.

They didn't know what they were fighting. They didn't know where they were. They didn't know how the hell they'd survive any of it.

But staying alive usually comes at such a price.

Into the headset, Jill shouted, "OH GOD! HURRY! PARKER!"

Parker glanced at Leon in the dark as they both turned on the tiny flashlights adorning their guns. They held gazes. The fear was palpable. It was contagious.

It was made worse when Jill shouted, "Leon, help me!"

Because she had to be dying to use his first name and beg for his help. They all knew that.

He froze. He licked his lips to help the dryness in his mouth. Her fear radiated. He was nearly paralyzed for a moment with the need to help her.

Parker shook his head. They couldn't answer her. Not now. The door was the only thing between them and death. They simply couldn't take all the monsters out there.

Not like this.

In this moment? Jill Valentine was on her own.

* * *

Jill dragged the girl in the darkness, jerking at the chains that bound her in a desperate attempt to set her free. She tried to stay as quiet as possible. She could feel the warm seeping blood and couldn't see a damn thing to pinpoint its location.

She felt blind, wildly, whispering, "Honey...where? Where are you bound? Can you help me?"

The girl just kept on screaming.

High, low, it was murderously chaotic in the eerie blackness. She shrieked like a banshee. She wailed madly.

And then?

She copied Jill's voice perfectly. She called for help into the void of light. "Leon, help!"

How in the hell did she KNOW his name was Leon? Parker was easy. She'd heard Jill yell for Parker. But how did she know that Kennedy was _Leon_ Kennedy?!

Jill whispered, again, "...what are you?

Into the silence, the little girl wailed, "PLEASE NO! PLEASE NOOOO!" And gurgled wetly.

Jill narrowed her eyes into the dark. Was she trying to make it seem like Jill was dying?

She opened her mouth to clarify she was alive.

And the little girl punched her hard in the face.

The darkness spilled from the world to her head and took her down.

* * *

Parker and Leon waited until things were quiet in the dark before they ventured out. The beams of their flashlights flickered over the bloody walls. The red was somehow chalky in texture in the ugly yellow light.

But it still squished wetly around their boots as they walked.

 _What the hell had died out here?_

Jill was quiet now in their headset. It was scary to think why. Leon was hoping she'd escaped or hidden...but he knew what silence meant. Silence meant dead.

Silence meant lost.

Some partners they were: Jill Valentine and her legendary ass were dead.

But that felt so wrong. It felt as wrong as strippers wearing boobie tassles. It just didn't wash. What game was happening here?

Was anything real?

Leon stopped and crouched. Curious, Parker watched him touch the blood on the ground and lift his hand. It dripped strangely.

They both held eyes as he sniffed it and said, quietly, "Kero syrup. Like they use in the movies."

Parker shook his head, "What madness is this?"

"I don't know."

He started to say something else and Parker shouted from somewhere in the compound. He roared for help. It echoed down the hallway.

And the truth was clear.

Something hear could mimic their voices.

Was it really Jill they'd been talking to before?

Was Jill even really here?

Were they being led through the compound to find her corpse?

Had she even made it off the Queen Zenobia? The questions were endless and each one spawned a new question. It was Murphy's Law - whatever could go wrong, would go wrong here. This place was a maze, a lie, and a front for something greater. Was it a test?

Leon aimed his light around the hallway. Parker did the same. They ignored the screaming in the facility. Their ears were, officially, not trustworthy. It was time to use the one faculty untouched by subterfuge and trickery: common sense.

They shifted and the texture of the syrup turned to blood as they rounded the hallway. Here they'd killed mutants. The stench of gunpowder and lead was still pungent. It permeated the nostrils in a noxious offense to the senses.

Leon eased his shoulder into a door that sat ajar, bumping it further until he could clear high and let Parker move in low. They entered the lab that Jill had stood in, he was nearly POSITIVE of it. The acrid aroma of vomit was still sharp on the air.

The evidence of the why was lying on the small table by the sink.

Babies.

Someone here was messing with babies.

In all the things they'd seen, somehow children still offended in a way that left you breathless with rage. Evil should have limits, at least this, at least here, at least that. But it didn't. It killed indiscriminately. It didn't care if the victim was too small to protect itself.

It devoured the weak and the young and the old and the strong. Evil was an equal opportunity offender. No one was safe from its reach. It tossed a grenade into the center of reason and obliterated any hope of honor.

They were dealing with something so nefarious, so perverse, that even the innocence of a baby wasn't safe.

The rules of a game that sick resonated.

Evil had taken residence in the frozen wasteland where they found themselves.

* * *

The wet snarfling sound was coupled with a gasp of pain. In the pitch black, it was hard to discern the direction of the noise. It huffed like a pig but growled low like a dog.

It sounded close but smelled far.

Smelled?

She shifted. Yeah. Smelled. She was bound sitting against a wall. She was naked and freezing. That much she was sure of; the rest was up for interpretation. It felt like she was trapped somewhere near water.

Jill closed eyes against the encroaching dark and listened. The trickle seemed to slide into the other noises and give credence to the thought. She was near water and the outside.

The scent of snow and cold was faint under the curling stench of death, but she'd been in this game a long time, she was good at detecting subtleties.

Beside her, a quiet voice filled the dark. "Are you awake?"

Female, hoarse, and young. But what was real here? Was the voice real? Was it just whatever was out there mimicking them?

There was no way to know.

But she answered anyway. "Yeah. I'm awake."

"Are you Jill?"

Jill said nothing, leaning her head back against the wall. the snarfling sound moved further away and Jill figured one of the creatures was headed off again to hunt for more victims. Why hadn't it killed her?

Too many questions. She could spend a lifetime asking them with no answer.

After her silence, the voice called back, "It's ok. I wouldn't trust me either. Why should you? Someone trapped you here and left you for dead. But it wasn't me."

Jill, again, said nothing. But the voice filled her in, "At first...when it started...I just thought it was karma, ya know? It was karma. We did this to ourselves. We let this happen. But then it was clear that someone was just...torturing us, turning us against each other...playing god."

Jill's heart stuttered. Of God's and Men...she'd never forget glimpsing the manuscript on Wesker's desk in Raccoon City. She'd always wondered what started his megalomania...but it was really quite simple: Man would always hunger to be gods. They would always chase immortality. They would always strive to be more than human.

Would she die in this place, in the dark, to help immortalize whoever was playing them?

So she finally responded, "Who is hunting us?"

The voice scoffed, "I don't know. After the first wave of attacks, there was only a handful of us left. It started messing with our minds - copying us, mocking us, throwing voices and leading us into traps. We'd chase a "dead" friend and find ourselves surrounded. It's human enough to impersonate...but it can't seem to understand emotion. So it kept copying my boyfriend and saying things he'd never say...shouting out poetry, cooing at me...I knew that wasn't him. I knew it. Because he never spoke that way."

Jill nodded, sighed, and remembered it was too dark to see it. "It's capable of mockery but not actual cloning."

"I don't think so. I think it's just capable of copying us to a certain extent. Because at the end of the day? It's still not human."

Jill shifted on the floor, "I have two partners here. If we can find out where we are...we might have a shot in hell of getting out of this. But I don't know how to convince them, now, that I'm not a doppelganger."

The voice came back to her, shaking, "There are ways. Do you know either of them well enough to have some kind of code phrase they'd respond to?"

Jill sighed again, "No. I'm friendly with one and not even remotely friendly with the other."

The quiet drug around them. The snarfling was softer still. The smell of water was like hope in a world gone black with failure. And then the girl said, "Maybe you can make that work to your advantage. They can mimic us, like mirrors in a way, but they can't _be_ us. They can't read our minds. Try using a memory or something that only he would know, that the monster can't possibly. Anything at all. Maybe if you use cues like that, you can avoid them falling into a trap."

As if they'd read her mind, after all, her headset buzzed, which meant her captor didn't even think about taking the earpiece out of her ear. Jill spoke, quietly, "Parker? Kennedy? Come back to me."

The quiet drug on until the cool voice responded, "Jill? Are you alright?"

Jill spoke, gently, "I've been better. I'm freezing, naked, and strapped to the floor. How's your day going?"

And, without missing a beat, Leon returned, "It's better now, though I might have trouble kicking bad guys with a big boner in my way. I'm gonna need visual confirmation of your current situation, Valentine."

Jill swallowed the laugh. He was incorrigible. She refused to encourage him. "I will as well, Kennedy. I need to clarify on the "big" adjective. Scientifically, that requires proof. Depends on what your opinion of big is, I guess. Didn't you say it had retreated up your own ass from the cold?"

Parker laughed into the headset. Kennedy snorted out a laugh of his own, "Yup. Now you're not the only one operating with a stick up their ass, kid."

Parker mused, "Wouldn't it be a dick up the ass, Leon?"

And Leon laughed, "Helping or hurting, Luciano. Helping or hurting."

Jill spoke, shaking her head, "I really hate that I'm glad to hear your voice."

Leon came back to her, amused but relieved, "Same. We found the lab."

The silence dragged until she eventually murmured, "...I lost it. I'm better than that. And I lost it."

Parker spoke, soothing her, "I almost did too, Jill. I almost did too. The good news is that the computers here seem to run on backup power or something. We might still have a chance of finding something useful on them."

Into the quiet, Leon informed her, "I need something, anything, that can give me an idea of what can mimic voices like that. I'm sure there's birds or animals that can, but I don't think we're dealing with a mocking-jay."

Jill whispered back, "We need to find out where we are. If we can do that, we can start to figure out anything local that might be significant."

To her surprise, the other woman in the dark murmured, "The Ojibwa. The locals. They are all over up here."

Quietly, Jill queried, "Where's _here_?"

And the voice whispered, "Quebec. But not the good parts. Not the safe part. You could walk for days and not find another person...but the tribes. They're here. They're all over."

Jill said, quietly, "You get that? I'm not alone here. There's another survivor with me."

And Leon answered, "Yup. The big "C" makes sense. Cold but still sustainable. And the good news? A helluva better choice than Siberia or the ends of the Earth."

Parker added, "Local folklore should be easy to track down if we can narrow down the specifics."

Jill huddled in the dark, listening to the snarfling sounds. Her companion breathed raggedly while the clack of keys on the other end signaled that Leon and Parker were at a terminal sifting through information.

Into the quiet, Leon teased, "I bet you wouldn't say no to a hug right now, Valentine."

She sighed, shaking her head, "Focus on the mission, Kennedy. Keep that dick up your own ass and away from mine."

He chuckled and finally gasped a little, "There's the money shot there, folks. Parker?"

Parker read into the quiet, "The wendigo comes from Algonquian Native American folklore and is the result of some severe hunger pains."

Leon picked up the reading and Jill listened, raptly. "As the tale goes, he was once a lost hunter. During a brutally cold winter, his intense hunger drove him to cannibalism. After feasting on human flesh, he became a crazed monster, roaming the forest in search of more people to eat. (*1)"

Jill made a small sound of fear.

"Those who live in a warm climate can breathe easy; the wendigo is a cold weather creature, having been spotted in Canada as well as colder northern states like Minnesota. As the bitter frost is no longer a problem for him like was when he was a mere hunter, he is immune to even the harshest conditions. For a carnivore, he's not the buffest of creatures. His skin is stretched tight across his bones, making them visible. Though he is said to be very large in stature at almost 15 feet tall, his body is described as skeletal and emaciated. This can be attributed to the notion that he is never satisfied with his cannibalistic urges constantly luring him to prowl for fresh victims."

Parker mused, darkly, "Maybe...maybe it's just a story right? Maybe it's not what's here."

But Leon continued, "Different versions of the wendigo disagree on his speed. Some say he is unusually fast and can endure walking for long periods of time. Others say he walks in a more haggard manner, almost as if he is falling apart. But speed isn't a necessary skill of wendigo. He doesn't rely on catching and capturing his prey. Rather, one of his said traits is his ability to mimic human voices. He'll use this skill to lure people in and draw them away from civilization, and into the desolate depths of the wilderness. Once isolated, he feasts."

Jill whispered, "...christ almighty."

And Leon answered, "Not christ. Not even close. But it gets worse...Another rough translation of Wendigo is _"the evil spirit that devours mankind_." This translation is related to the version of the wendigo that claims he has the power to curse humans by possessing them. Once he has infiltrated their minds, he can turn them into wendigos as well, instilling upon them the same lust for human flesh that he himself has."

Jill repeated what he'd told her to the voice in the dark. The woman made small noises of grief and pain. But she didn't deny of it. That spoke volumes.

Jill responded, hoarsely, "So everyone here...he turned them all."

The woman in the dark let out a small sob. "It was Joe. Joe was the first one to go out into the woods. He found something out there. At first he thought it was a deer...but it wasn't a deer. He brought it back. We kept it in the kennels with the dogs. We started experimenting on it...and then Joe died. He died in his sleep but his face...his face just...erupted. Like his brain had imploded. It was Joe...Joe brought back the Wendigo."

Into her weeping, Leon interjected, "None of this helps us fight it. Fireworks, clearly. And sunlight. So the wendigo...someone figured out how to mate it to the plagas. Someone made the perfect hunter."

The silence fell between them. It filled up the chest and left you breathless. Because the perfect hunter was snarfling in the dark just outside where Jill Valentine was bound naked to the wall.

Finally, she whispered, "...what does he want with us?"

And the woman returned, brokenly, "...he needs children. He needs to make children. He needs babies to join the fight."

Terrified, Jill demanded, "Kennedy...does it say that? Does it say anything about mating?"

"I don't know." He paused, scanning the screen in front of him, "But it says plenty about killing one."

Parker mused, "How?"

And he answered, "A wendigo isn't easily slain. Bullets and wounds will simply allow it to regenerate. Fire - to cleanse it. And silver bullets - to keep it from healing. If nothing else, silver coated steel will do the trick. But immediately after a heart blow, the wendigo must be burned and dismembered and the ashes scattered. The other options is to bury the pieces far away from the others. Even still...the wendigo is a demon. Some believe killing it will simply release the soul to wander until it can find another body to inhabit."

Leon was still perusing the folklore when Parker said, from the other computer, "Jesus was buttfucked by Judas."

Leon couldn't stop the laugh. "I think he'd be surprised to know it. Although I bet that ship has a fandom following somewhere."

Parker shook his head, "Listen to this...it's a series of files from the one of the lab rats here..."

* * *

 **File 1:**

 **Sample 1 positive.**

 **Proactive completion of initial mating complete. Subject shows intense interest in male and females alike. Implantation of sack of "eggs" into either the anus or the vagina results in conception. Incubation is possible in both gender genetic hosts.**

 **Carriers were found to be able to succinctly sustain six "fetuses" at any time. Removal required scientific extraction.**

* * *

Jill spoke, voice shaking, "You're saying it doesn't have to be women."

Leon laughed, dryly, "So much for hoping I was wrong. Apparently, my sweet ass is as legendary as yours here, Valentine."

Jill returned, coolly, "Come find me, Kennedy. We'll use the buddy system. When in danger, offer your buddy's ass first."

He laughed, shaking his head. He and Parker held eyes across the room. "We need to find you yesterday, Jill."

She laughed herself, surprising him. "You think? I'm someplace near running natural water. I can smell the outside. Maybe a barn or a former garden. We need some kind of layout of this place. I don't know how much time I have. But we need a code word in case this thing starts mocking us."

Leon mused, "You yelled my name earlier. Not Kennedy but Leon. It's how I knew it wasn't you."

"Good. That works. We both know I wouldn't be yelling your name otherwise."

"You would. If I was there replacing that big stick up your ass with mine."

Jill rolled her eyes. Parker chuckled. Jill mused, "Honestly, it's unlikely you could compare. It's a pretty big stick."

He laughed, clicking around to try to find a map. "You got me there, kid. Not sure a mortal man can compare with a stick that's twenty years long." He paused, clicking on a set of security cameras. They flickered around the dark, showing heat signatures and using infrared to illuminate the dark.

Leon clicked through rooms, noting date and location stamps. He clicked on Northwest Kennel and found the horror of what had once been dogs. Nearly gagging, he almost clicked off...when he noticed the dripping pattern of the blood. It ran and stopped, disappearing into the straw beneath the pile of mutilated corpses.

Curious, he zoomed in on the mess of it, grateful it was in black and white and saved him from the full frontal.

Parker called, "I got it! A loose blueprint of the facility! It's enormous, which is the bad news, but at least we're only flying MOSTLY blind now."

Leon queried, "Jill? What else do you smell?"

She sniffed, wincing, "Rot. Old mold. The faint suggestion of snow. Urine."

He shook his head, "Strange question...but does the urine smell human? Or animal?"

Jill shook her head, "You spend a lot of time sniffing dog pee, Kennedy?"

He laughed, "Just tell me if you can discern a difference. It matters, I promise."

After a moment, she mused, "It's missing the stench of a man missing the toilet, if that's what you're asking. Smells almost like a barn at a farm or something."

"...like it saturated into hay maybe?"

She arched her brows, "...yeah. Maybe. Why?"

"I might know where you are." He clicked the camera to circle the room, "Parker...how far to the Northwest Kennel?"

Parker studied the blueprint, narrowing his eyes, "If we're in the central laboratory than the kennel isn't far."

Leon nodded, "Worth a shot. Jill? Don't die. It's a waste of a perfectly sweet ass."

She rolled her eyes and he added, "Besides...if anyone's dumping a load in there, I'd like to be considered for the job."

Damn him. He was a complete pervert. The truth was? She was glad of it. He was good at keeping her mind off the fact that she was kneeling and waiting to be bait for a demon looking to mate.

"You have to get those balls to drop back out before you can make babies, Kennedy."

He laughed, shifting with Parker to hurry for the door. "Good point. Maybe you can go on an exploratory mission when I find you. Finders keepers, I promise."

"...are you offering me your balls?"

"They're so cold right now, sweetheart, I'll let you keep them if you can't restore some feeling down there. Honestly."

She hated herself, she really did, but she laughed. Parker arched both brows. Leon tilted his head, pausing, "...I heard that."

"It wasn't me. It was the floor squeaking."

She wasn't lost if he'd finally wrangled a laugh out of her. Not completely. But he was kinda afraid she'd stop laughing before he could find her.

One thing was true: this facility belonged to the Wendigo. They needed to find Jill...soon...before she did too.

* * *

 **(*1) The Wendigo - ancient-horrors dot net**

 **(*2) Wargs -Wikipedia**


	7. Chapter 6: Hopeless

**Revelations:**

 **Mirror Mask**

* * *

 **Episode 6:**

 **Hopeless**

* * *

 **The Middle of Nowhere**

* * *

The voice in the dark wasn't like anything she'd ever heard before. It rattled instead of roared. It hissed instead of hollered. It was sibilant, a stir of echoes, a thing that promises that under the taunting tiny sound...a horrible truth awaits.

On her knees, Jill shivered. She closed her eyes to deny herself the vision that made the darkness worse. It didn't matter if she looked death in the eye anyway. At least, if she denied it, she could pretend it wasn't so horrible. She could pretend she wasn't terrified.

From the darkness, the other girl called, "Jill?"

Maybe it was time to finally acknowledge that. Trembling, Jill replied, "Yeah. I'm Jill."

"I heard-I heard it yell your name before.. I'm Kate. Kate Davis. I was one of the scientists here before-" She trailed off and Jill heard her breath hitch. "I'll tell you whatever you want. I figure there's no hope for it now. I should tell someone, anyone, that might be able to escape and make sure this place is burned to the ground."

Jill waited as she spoke into the black. "They told us at first that we were trying to find a cure for a rare disease. They made it seem like we were doing good things. When the experimenting started, we justified it that the person was already infected. So killing them was a mercy."

Jill said nothing. Her chest hurt with a need to condemn. But maybe she didn't know what it was like here. Maybe she was judging what she didn't understand.

Silence filled the air around them.

Kate whispered, "...but killing them just made it worse...because they didn't stay dead."

Softly, Leon's voice in her ear responded, "...heard that story before."

Jill, encouragingly, urged, "...zombies?"

Kate whimpered, "I don't know. I didn't know then...I don't understand what was happening here. I'm not sure what we were doing now. I just know that what we started...I don't think it can be undone."

The truth of that hung around them like a cloud of horror. What did that mean? Undone? What was _done?_

Into the quiet darkness, that voice came again, "What you think you know, is often what destroys you. Ask yourself what often masquerades as a man and is a monster. Ask yourself...how one becomes the other. You are in the dark...how do you escape it?"

When no one answered, the voice told them, " _What is that lamp which lights up men,but flame engulfs it,and wargs grasp after it alway_ s."

Wargs?

Softly, Leon speculated, "...are we off? Is it telling us it's not a Wendigo...it's a warg?"

In response, Jill whispered, "...wargs were skinchangers in some mythology...maybe it's the same thing."

Did it really matter?

Whatever it was, it had Jill in its den. Whatever it was, it was being set loose against them in some kind of game. The proverbial eye in the sky was watching them, judging them, leading them...where?

Why?

What came after?

If they managed to stop the Wendigo or the warg or the demon that was both...what then? Another challenge? Did it only end with one of them dead?

In surprise, Parker filled the silence, "...sunlight."

Brows arched, Leon asked him, "What?"

"Wargs grasp after it always...wendigos hide from it...we're somewhere in a park of the world with so little of it..."

Leon snapped his fingers, " _Sköll_ chases the sun. Daylight. It wants us to get the goddamn thing out in the daylight."

Whispering, Jill wondered, "You saying that voice wants _us_ to get rid of this thing?"

Parker returned, "...I think so. Maybe it's a test. Maybe it's a coward tracking us...but it wants us to chase the sunlight and get rid of the warg."

Leon tapped his boot, "Ok. Wendigo, warg...it doesn't matter. What matters is that we don't have much choice here. The damn thing is able to mimic us, it can make us hallucinate, it won't be long before it starts having us turn on each other too. So we need to get Jill, set up some kind of trap, and lure the damn thing out into the sun. Knowing where we are can help us find out when the sun rises."

Jill urged, quietly, "...do you know _exactly_ where we are?"

And the eye in the sky answered, "S _he lights up every land and shines over all men, and Skoll and Hatti are called wargs. Those are wolves, one going before the sun, the other after the moon._ "

Leon considered that for a moment before he spoke again. "Jill?"

Softly, she answered, "Yeah?"

"Putting aside the butt is a full moon joke-"

"...although not entirely,"She muttered and had him laughing a little.

"Right. Putting aside the fact I'd chase your full moon all over this frozen shithole if you let me."

Jill sighed with tried patience. Parker chuckled. Leon continued, "I think you're the key here."

She tilted her head, "How so?"

"If we think of Parker and I as Hatti and Skoll, what if you're the sun?"

There was a quiet as everyone digested this. Into it, Leon added, "That thing will chase you, Jill. It wants you enough to have taken you alive and not killed you. It wants you enough to have tricked you. Why? I think the eye in the sky knows that. I think it wants you to get free so it chases you, and Parker and I get to kill it when it hits the sunlight."

Annoyed, Jill sighed, "Because I need men to save me like a damsel in distress. I'm better with a gun than either of you."

Parker snorted. Leon rolled his eyes and remarked, "...that thing hit you in your head, sweetheart? You must have lost your mind if you think that's true. I could put a hole through the eagle eye of a quarter at almost a thousand yards."

Jill scoffed, "For all the good that does me at the moment. Why don't you put some of that legendary blood hounding to work and find me first?"

He kept picturing Jill birthing some kind of monster baby. Worried but willing to hide it, he remarked, "Gladly, sweetheart. You miss me?"

She rolled her eyes. Beside her, Kate whispered, "...are they coming? Are they close?"

The hope in her voice was infectious. Jill breathed softly and vowed, "...I hope so...I really, really do."

Leon and Parker looked at each other with the same thought between us - _me too._

There was a clunk. There was a thunk. There was a cool sound of cracking ice.

Parker warned, "...behind yo-"

The world went white with light. Leon smashed into the computers and went to the floor. Something roared and squealed, whipped and whimpered and raged. He tried to roll over and something sank into his back to pin him to the floor

He screamed. Parker's gun lit in flashes of white.

Leon grabbed for his knife and a gush of fetid breath in his face warned him, "...surrender."

He almost laughed, but the sound sobbed out of his lungs instead. His hand slid off the knife. His mind resisted, but the glimmer of red in the world above him haunted. It left him breathless. It left him staring.

He simply gave up and lay still on the floor while his blood spilled red around him.

* * *

There was so much pain. It hurt to breathe, to move, to _think_.

 _Am I dead? Am I dying?_

Confusion. Dementia. He hurt. He hurt so bad. He was alive.

He lifted his head, his vision was blurry. It was so hard to see. So hard.

Thoughts that ran together like rain on a windshield.

Blood, so much blood.

Was it his? Was it…

"Jill?"

His voice, deep, gruff. It hurt to talk.

"Jill!?"

He rolled, tried to sit up.

Burning flesh. He could smell burning flesh.

His?

"Jill!"

Hands on his back, lifting.

He grabbed for anything to hold him there. He was going to _float away._

 _"The gods themselves shall perish: The sons of the gods shall reign!"_

Leon drifted into that voice.

And sank down into the waiting dark.

* * *

Kate made a small sound of fear. "...you're so quiet. It's bad, right? It's so bad."

He'd finally stopped screaming.

Terror turned her chest so tight that Jill's only sound was a small moan. She'd never heard anything in her life like the sound of Leon Kennedy screaming. No arrogance, no mad taunting, no clever or witty repartee - he'd simply screamed. Her chin sank to her chest as she whispered, "...Kennedy...come back."

No answer.

"Parker?"

No answer.

Something scuffled in the dark. Kate made another whimper, "...I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry. I didn't know...god _help me.._ I didn't _know."_

The dark turned gray. There was a wet sound of skin slurping on stone. Jill closed her eyes, fighting the urge to panic and cry. Kate did that for her, weeping softly into the silence.

Jill tried once more, although her body had long since surrendered to the cold and the fear. Lips numb, she beckoned, "...Kennedy...come back."

His voice made her nearly piss herself, "...I'm here."

She froze. Her need to believe was so strong it nearly made her vomit. Jill waited a moment and whispered, "...prove it."

After a handful of moments, his voice - breathy with pain but alert - instructed, "...I wouldn't say no to a hand job when this was over."

Halfhearted, hurting, but just crude enough that if it was the wendigo, it was a better one than Kate led on. Softly, Jill breathed, "...my hands are so cold I'd give you frost bite if I tried."

He laughed into her ear, "...I can think of worst things right now, sweetheart...Jill?"

She inhaled sharply. "...yeah?"

"Call my name out loud, would ya?"

She shook her head, "...you wish."

She could hear him shift. Her ears perked up. Her eyes opened in the dark as he instructed again, "Come on...call for me."

Without waiting, she did just that, "Kennedy?!"

His answer wasn't just in her ear anymore. It was there in the dark with her. "... _fuck."_

Jill went still. Kate whimpered. She called, "...you can't be here! Please...please please...if you're here..."

Jill finished, "...then we're screwed."

Softly, Leon teased, "...I'd like to be screwed with you, honey, but I gotta admit...the fantasy wasn't quite like this. Considerably less stench of death and urine around us."

Jill wanted to cry. Jill wanted to laugh. Jill wanted to run. She was trapped there in the dark shaking her head, "...you naked?"

His voice was amused, "...nope. Why? You wanna sneak a peak?"

Jill snorted, "I'm scared enough thanks. Don't need to die of fright."

He laughed.

It was good, somehow, to know he was there. She knew without the humor, she'd have given up by now. She was terrified for Parker. She was terrified for all of them. What did it want with him now?

What had changed?

The laughter died as something moved in the dark. Quietly, Kate whispered, "...run...when you can...run...ok?! _RUN!"_

Her scream was high. It echoed. The lights flickered and Jill caught glimpses of what was happening. Naked, the girl struggled to avoid the thing that gripped her. It lifted he from the ground, her hands were slapping and she was screaming. A flash of things like a bad horror movie. It was like a hunched over, oily, horrible werewolf or something. It had antlers? Horns? It was slithering and somehow hairy and somehow human? Her mind couldn't find anything to compare it to. Jill shouted, "DON'T!"

It bent Kate back like it would eat her. It lifted her to its mouth. She screamed, fighting still, fighting and wailing. Leon jerked on his chains in the flashing lights and Jill caught sight of him, arms bound, face bloody but angry. The anger on him was somehow terribly beautiful. He roared it, "YOU SON OF A BITCH!"

Kate's arms bound behind her back worked like a set of handlebars. It didn't need her consent. The lights flickered, she turned her head to Jill and her pretty pixie face stopped screaming as she begged one more time, "... _help me..."_

The thing impaled her on its bony protuberance. It was sexual, but it wasn't. Her legs went stiff and finally flopped uselessly around its thrusting. She went limp in its arms and the lights stopped flickering.

The dark swallowed everything.

Jill sagged on the floor, face collapsing with the need to cry. Her breath hitched and a voice in the dark invited, "...don't."

She inhaled sharply.

Kennedy's voice again, "...don't cry. If you cry, I'll lose faith."

She sucked in a sharp breath.

He called, "...I'm gonna kill it."

She said nothing. She just made a small sound like a whimper. He called it again, "...I'm gonna kill it. It won't touch you. Do you hear me?"

She whimpered.

He said it again, "It won't touch you. Say it out loud."

Jill shivered on the floor, "...it won't touch me."

A whisper, but it was better than nothing. His soothing voice came again, "...tell me about Jill Valentine."

She trembled on the floor and closed her eyes, swaying where she was kneeling. She appreciated the effort of it. She really did. So, she just started talking. She told him about growing up in the care of a woman who was basically a doormat to any man who wanted her. She talked about changing schools, changing houses, changing cities as her mother went from man to man looking for love.

She talked about being the only kid on the playground without friends. She mentioned growing into a strong survivor by simply never being close to anyone. As she spoke, she was soothed somehow by the simplicity of it.

Where he knelt, Leon felt a roll of sympathy for a girl who'd basically been ignored most of her life. He realized she was someone worth respecting as she went into talking about her time in Delta Force and her self propelled rise to being a S.T.A.R.S. member. She didn't talk about guys and clothes like most girls. She didn't speak about boys she'd left behind. She just talked about wanting to belong.

She'd spent her whole life trying to find a place that was hers.

She'd had nothing but the rug ripped out from under her everywhere she went.

She spoke about surviving, but there was a sadness under it that broke his heart. She needed a friend or something, and she'd only really had one - Chris Redfield. Currently, he was M.I.A. like they were. She'd been trying to find her only friend when she'd become a victim like this.

The rage on her behalf was nearly as white hot as it was for the girl that had gone silent in the dark.

He teased Jill, he encourage, he prompted her to keep talking. He didn't want her to stop and think about the thing that had just raped a girl right in front of them. He didn't want her to dwell in fear.

He meant what he said.

That thing was dead where it stood.

He was the guy who killed monsters.

It was his fucking job. It was who he was. He was going to kill that thing. Stupid Norse mythology and games aside, he was here to slaughter that thing. When she went quiet, he urged, "...tell me about Redfield. Tell me about the long lost love affair."

She laughed, voice breaking, "...no love...not like that...he's not a man you love like that."

Curious about it, Leon inquired, "...how so?"

"He's never going to stop. He's never going to give up the fight and go home. He can't. It's in his blood. Love isn't something you try to get from Chris Redfield."

Head tilted, he wondered, "What about you? Do you get love from Jill Valentine?"

With a snort, she asked, "Why? You applying for the job?"

He laughed. "Maybe. You saying I got a chance?"

"...you have a better chance of fighting that thing and winning."

He chuckled, "...so...you're saying there's a chance."

He liked the soft sound of amusement. If he could keep her laughing, he could keep her from descending into terror. He was afraid enough for them both. The good news? He channeled his fear into survival.

The thing on the floor finally made a scuffle of release. His hands were free. He rose, feeling over himself in the dark for his weapons. Nothing. He was weaponless. But that was ok. In some ways, he was a better weapon when you took away his tools.

Jill's voice guided him toward her as she whispered, "...find Chris if-just...find Chris for me, ok? I know I've been a bitch. I know you don't have any reason to c-"

The coat was warm as it slid over her shoulders. It settled like a hug around her body. She went silent, feeling the heat of it and smelling him on it. He smelled good like something earthy and musk. She knew it left him in a shirt and vest. She started to object and he zipped it over her torso.

Jill felt him pull at her restraints and there was a clink of noises. She listened to the sound of his belt releasing from his pants. Her eyebrows winged up and his soft voice teased, "...you wish, kiddo."

Amused, she heard him use his belt on the lock that bound her to the floor. After a moment, her hands were free. She poked her arms through his sleeves and he didn't even help her to her feet. She pushed upward, stumbled, and let him catch her to steady her. Jill gripped his vest to hold on for a moment, using the moment to let her forehead brush his neck. Not a hug, not exactly, but kinda. She _hated_ that she wanted the hug.

His breath brushed her ear, "...you ready?"

She nodded. He let go of her arms. Jill kept her side close to him to feel his heat as they moved slowly through the dark. When he drifted too far, her hand came down and slid against his.

They held hands in the dark as they moved in fear.

She wanted to find Kate. She wanted to help. She knew, without trying, that Kate was impregnated now. She'd seen what happened to the one's who carried the offspring. Kate wouldn't survive the birth.

Was there any way to save her?

How had Leon ended up there in the dark with her?

With a tremor of fear, she wondered, "...you said men could carry the fetuses...are you-"

He shook his head, "...I can't tell you why I know the answer is no...I can tell you that something... _tried.._.and couldn't? It didn't? Something. I...Parker...I don't know."

Jill pressed a little closer. His arm sealed against the front of her jacket. She should be ashamed to cling like she was, but the dark made them both afraid now. She left his right hand and her left free - both of their dominant hands open.

Not that they had a weapon to pull anyway.

Their feet brushed the ground. Her bare ones squished in something. She made a small sound of disgust and he guided her forward. His hands touched the wall. The gloves too the brunt of the wet, but his palm skimmed through something sticky and tacky.

Jill let go of him to feel along the wall beside him. They didn't stray far from the other until his palm found a knob, twisted, and light spilled in around his body. Jill hurried toward him, he caught her hand again, and pulled her from the darkness.

The second they were in the hallway, she simply gave up trying to be tough.

She spilled against his front. Surprised, he caught her in a hug. She shook, face against his vest and confessed, "...thank you...oh god...thank you."

His hands hesitated and finally cupped around her back and head to hold her. He wanted to tease her about her being naked, but the image of Kate kept him from trying. Jill clung to him, fingers digging into his back for a moment.

She threatened, "You tell anyone about this..."

He smiled, shook his head, and mused, "...about what?"

Her mouth curved up and he added, "Besides...who'd believe me? The Ice Queen looking for a hug? Please...I'd be laughed out of the room before I could finish."

They should let go. It was dangerous to keep standing there hugging, but the light was around them again. The fear was somehow lessened in the warm glow of it. The cold wasn't as cold.

It was stupid to fear the dark, because the light held the same horror.

It was stupid to feel safer in the arms of another person because they couldn't fight the thing that chased them. They couldn't kill it. They couldn't do anything but run.

It was stupid to stay there hugging but neither one seemed in a hurry to let go.


End file.
